First, do we really believe the doctrine? If we do, surely we must frequent the sacrifice. We must see in the altar service the highest act of our devotion. We must perceive that here is the crown and completion of all other worship, the sum and substance of our praises and thanksgivings, the prevailing mode of petition for ourselves and of intercession for others, the greatest and highest means of applying to our individual wants and individual sins the mercies of God through the ever-availing sacrifice of Christ. Such persuasion of their dignity and power has ever pervaded those who have believed in a priesthood, an altar, and a sacrifice. Heathen testimony witnesses to this, even amidst all the corruption and debasement of idol worship. The solemn, gorgeous, awful sacrifice has ever been the central act of all devotion, that to which all the people congregated, and to which, if they had any religion, they delighted to be called. We cannot here, and we need not, go into the proofs of this from the poets or historians of antiquity. We hardly need adduce any proofs further than we have done already from Holy Scripture to it. We may, however, just recall the manner of the sacrifice offered by Samuel previous to the anointing of Saul to be king over Israel, when all the people would not eat until the Prophet came, “because he doth bless the sacrifice.” {125a} And the majesty of the great feast and sacrifice at the dedication of Solomon’s temple; {125b} and again, the solemn renewal of the covenant and worship of God by Josiah, King of Judah, when he held the feast of the Passover unto the Lord, such as had not been “from the days of the judges that judged Israel, nor in all the days of the kings of Israel, nor of the kings of Judah.” {125c} Let us remember, too, that the great Paschal sacrifice and feast, itself the type of the true Lamb of God, was ordained to be annually kept under the earlier dispensation, and was assuredly so great and central a scene and act of Jewish devotion that to it the whole nation was called, and called so stringently that he who observed it not was to be cut off from the people. {125d} What an intimation that he who keeps not its far greater antitype, the Christian Passover in the Eucharistic Sacrifice and feast, is cutting himself off from the people of God under the new and better covenant! Do we, then, all of us thus frequent and delight in the Christian altar? and if not, why not? Do we suppose that holiness of life, less than that which may allow us to come worthily to the Holy Eucharist, will be sufficient to let us come to heaven? Do we think that, though we are without the marriage garment which we feel is needful for us to go to the Supper of the Lord on earth, we can enter without it, to sit down at the great marriage of the Lamb in the courts of heaven? Can we believe that a heart less devoted to God, and a love and obedience less perfect toward Christ than will permit us